The steep decline means employers are all but guaranteed
to get away with hiring illegal immigrants, the Sacramento
Bee reported.
“Work-site enforcement has been a low priority,” Government
Accountability Office (GAO) official Richard Stana told a
House panel.

In 1999, federal officials formally notified 417
employers that they would be fined for knowingly hiring
illegal immigrants or improperly completing employment
verification forms. However, only three employers received
the notice of a fine in 2003, GAO auditors found.
Similarly, immigration officials arrested 2,849 individuals
at workplaces in 1999. By 2003, the GAO noted, the number
of workplace arrests had fallen to 445.

Critics, though, have long considered employer sanctions
to be ineffective, a problem that has gotten worse since
9/11, GAO auditors found. Officials now focus almost
exclusively on removing unauthorized workers from
vulnerable sites such as airports and nuclear power
plants.

Immigration officials now require field offices to
request prior headquarters approval before opening any new
workplace investigations of such noncritical sites as farms
and restaurants, GAO auditors revealed. “It has focused
resources,” Stana said of the new policy, “but it has
discouraged work-site enforcement.”